The Aftermath

Luckily, our high school's Drama Club was also in New York that week, so we spent a lot of time running around the city with them. He largely ignored me, and I busied myself with volunteering to chaperone some of the kids to various tourist sites. I sent him back home with a kiss and the hope that we could figure out exactly what was going on once he was back at college and we had some time and space separating us from the awkwardness of the situation.

We spoke on the phone a few times over the next week. He blamed his behavior on stress, feeling uncomfortable with a new place and new situation...frankly, everything except alien abduction.

As I was hanging up the phone after one of our talks, I said "I love you", as I had plenty of times before. And he did not respond.

Then he didn't answer or return my calls for the next few days.

Then I received a Facebook message from a friend of mine who also happened to be one of Broadway's housemates. In the message, she expressed her condolences on Broadway and I's breakup.

Wait....

What?!?!?!? When did we break up?!?!?

These were my first words to my dear, sweet friend when I called her and demanded to know what Broadway had told her. She hemmed and hawed and insisted that I talk to him directly.

Of course, he ignored my call, but I left a message demanding that we talk NOW and, low and behold, I received a call about an hour later.

At first, he refused to acknowledge that he had told his friends at school that we had broken up. When directly confronted, he hemmed and hawed and finally, FINALLY (I'll spare you all of the details of this three hour call, dear readers) admitted that

You (and my roommates, and my brother, and...well...any of my friends or family members who had met him) guessed it...he's gay.

I know, I know...I should have known. Everyone else did. But what could I do? He was popular, attractive, friendly, intelligent, fun...and he really, genuinely seemed to like me.

Right up until the point when he decided to leave me lying half naked in a pool of my own naivete because he had a mutual male friend of ours who was equally unclothed and willing back at school.

To be fair, I didn't find out about that until much later.

It also took me a while to find out that my roommates had used a gay male friend of ours to try to seduce him over spring break to find out if he really was gay or not. At first, I was upset by this, and if I had written this post a year ago, I probably would have suggested to anyone in a similar situation to tell your friend that the person she's dating isn't *ahem* right for her.

But, you know? I wouldn't have listened if they had. I probably just would have been angry and resentful. And I might have lost wonderful friends who were helping in the best way they knew how.

Which brings me to the morals of this tale:

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's almost certainly a duck.

and

Good friends are always there fore you, whereas boyfriends my hop away at any moment.